Brian Morin, assistant director of First Year Experience said months of planning goes into the event.
“We start in the spring semester,” he said.
A variety of committees met in the planning process including cultural support centers, Union Board and FYE.
His office, he said, hosts Welcome Week for the ?campus.
“We are pretty busy right now for all things Welcome Week,” he said
The indoor portion is a highlight of CultureFest, Morin said.
It always fills up to the 3200 person capacity. A lot of planning went into organizing the entertainment for these people. In the last years they pulled away from using speakers in the indoor portion, he said. Now they use performers.
This year will be a 20-year-old Egyptian poet. She is a student elsewhere in the country and speaks about international issues. She’s big with international students, Morin said.
“It’s cool having a college student come and talk to college students,” he said noting that older speakers may be a bit detached from the audience.
A goal of this event is to teach a major skill to the incoming freshmen. As new people to campus, students need to learn to appreciate differences and interact with others. CultureFest introduces students to new experiences.
The event is meant to set the tone for how they are going to spend their time here, Morin said.
To do this, there will be some changes to how the event runs.
“The general flow of it is the same,” he added. However there used to be seven cultural areas, now there will be eight with the disability services for students included.
CultureFest will hopefully challenge incoming students on how to engage with other cultures, he said. This is especially the case now, as IU rises as both a hub for international students and a top sender of students abroad.
Last year IU was number five in the Open Doors ranking of schools that send students abroad. Furthermore, according to University statistics, international students are on the rise in the student population.
In fall 2005 they comprised 4.1 percent of the undergraduate population. Last year in 2013, they were 10.7 percent. That’s a difference of 2,255 students and an array of cultures included into campus.
Despite statistics, the best moment for Morin is when IU Auditorium’s doors open transitioning from the indoor portion to outdoors.
“You smell the food,” he said, “You see the tents.”
Then you’re seeing 5,000 people in front of you, he said.
The fact that a diversity event attracts thousands of people was a fun aspect of CultureFest, Morin said. When he visits conferences with other universities, he said people are always blown away by its numbers.
